Skip links

Inspirational Quotations by Daniel Day-Lewis (English Actor )

Daniel Michael Blake Day-Lewis (b.1957) is an English actor. Known as the “world’s greatest actor,” Day-Lewis is famous for his exceptional versatility, on-screen intensity, and exhaustive preparation for the demands of each role.

Highly selective in his roles, Day-Lewis is the first actor to win the Academy Award for Best Actor thrice—for My Left Foot (1989,) There Will Be Blood (2007,) and Lincoln (2012;) he was nominated for three more.

As a method actor, Day-Lewis often remains in character even when he’s off the stage set of a film. He learned Czech to play a philandering doctor in the adoption of Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, listened to rapper Eminem’s music to channel anger in Gangs of New York, and confined himself to a wheelchair for My Left Foot—he even had the film’s crew push him around the set and spoon-feed him.

Being at the center of a film is a burden one takes on with innocence—the first time. Thereafter, you take it on with trepidation.—Daniel Day-LewisTopics: Fame

The thing about performance, even if it’s only an illusion, is that it is a celebration of the fact that we do contain within ourselves infinite possibilities.—Daniel Day-LewisTopics: Actors, Acting

You don’t merely give over your creativity to making a film — you give over your life! In theatre, by contrast, you live these two rather strange lives simultaneously; you have no option but to confront the mould on last night’s washing-up.—Daniel Day-LewisTopics: Actors, Acting

I suppose I have a highly developed capacity for self-delusion, so it’s no problem for me to believe that I’m somebody else.—Daniel Day-Lewis